Iran’s Vintage Fighter Jets Keep Falling Out Of The Sky

Frequent crashes of Iranian fighter jets are striking reminders of just how old the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force’s (IRIAF) aircraft are.

Two Iranian pilots were killed on May 24 when their Chinese-built Chengdu J-7 crashed 124 miles east of the central city of Isfahan due to an accident. In February, a two-seater IRIAF F-5 fighter jet crashed into a school in the northwestern city of Tabriz after suffering technical problems. The crash killed both crew members and a person on the ground.

On June 1, 2021, another F-5 crashed after developing a “technical problem” near Dezful in southwest Iran. That crash also killed both crew members.

In December 2019, an IRIAF MiG-29 crashed in the Sabalan mountain range near the country’s border with Azerbaijan. That fighter jet had been recently overhauled, and the pilot was taking it for a test flight when the crash occurred.

And on Aug. 26, 2018, an F-5 crash-landed near Dezful after developing mechanical problems killing the pilot.

All these incidents are unsurprising. Of course, every air force loses fighters, and even pilots, from accidents or technical malfunctions. In Iran’s case, however, most of these accidents can be attributed to the simple fact that its jets are really old, with many airframes worn after 40+ years of operation.

The last time Iran bought new fighters was in the early 1990s when it acquired a fleet of MiG-29As from Moscow. Still, to this day, the bulk of the IRIAF consists of jets Iran ordered before the 1979 revolution, when the last Shah of Iran bought large numbers of F-4s and F-5s and, most noteworthy, 80 F-14A Tomcats, 79 of which were delivered before the revolution. The only other aircraft it bought were the Chinese F-7s, which are essentially license-built copies of the MiG-21, in the 1980s during the Iran-Iraq War. (In 1991, a significant number of the Iraqi Air Force flew to Iran to evade destruction during that year’s Persian Gulf War. Tehran confiscated all those aircraft, including MiG-29s and French-built Mirage F1s.)

The fact Iran kept its maintenance-heavy F-14As in particular operational for so long is not unimpressive, especially when one considers all the media reports in the late 1970s, which invariably predicted that Tehran’s Tomcats would become grounded without constant hands-on technical support from American contractors and a steady supply of spare parts. Despite all those contractors leaving Iran after the 1979 revolution and the imposition of an arms embargo on Tehran, the Tomcats remained operational. They proved themselves invaluable assets during the war with Iraq. Not only did many F-14s keep flying after the revolution, but they are also still flying nearly half a century later.

But still, these planes are really old. And despite Iran’s success in keeping many of them airborne for so long (and even producing F-5 derivatives from the ground up), their service lives are clearly coming to an end.

But what could replace them?

It has been reasonably speculated that Iran might decide to acquire two different fighter types, one from China and the other from Russia, by the end of this decade or the early 2030s. The most likely options would be Russian Su-30SMs and Su-35s to replace the F-14s and F-4s and Chinese J-10Cs to replace the MiG-29s and others.

However, the likelihood of Iran seeking Russian jets after the invasion of Ukraine has probably lessened in light of the severe supply chain issues the Russian military will likely face for years to come. Furthermore, aviation experts have noted that the J-10C is a much better and more affordable aircraft even before that war. The J-10C also has actively electronically scanned array (AESA) radar, something advanced Russian jets such as the Su-35 do not, much to the annoyance of Egypt and other Russian arms clients.

A fleet of J-10Cs, especially armed with China’s long-range PL-15 air-to-air missile, would arguably be the most significant upgrade to Iran’s air force since it procured the F-14s armed with long-range AIM-54 Phoenix missiles back in the late 1970s. (Iran was reportedly not happy with its MiG-29As after testing them against its Tomcats and finding the latter consistently outperformed the former.) And since China and Iran recently signed a 25-year strategic agreement, Beijing would likely be willing to sell Tehran the jets.

However, that might not ever happen. The strongest armed force in Iran is not the regular military, it is the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) paramilitary. And the IRGC has preferred to develop locally-built ballistic missiles and drones rather than importing advanced fighter jets to upgrade the IRIAF. The IRGC gave all the aircraft in its small air force, a modest fleet of Russian-built Su-25 Frogfoot attack planes flown from Iraq in 1991, back to Baghdad in mid-2014 shortly after the Islamic State (ISIS) conquered large parts of northern Iraq.

The IRGC has also shown a similar disinclination to importing main battle tanks when Iran previously had opportunities to upgrade the armored forces of the regular army (the Artesh). Consequently, rather than upgrading with J-10Cs or other new aircraft in the next decade, the powers that be in Iran might instead decide to let the country’s long-serving arsenal of fighter jets wither and die rather than gradually retire and replace them.